Cry Havoc

You read correctly; the Scurrg H-6 Bomber Expansion Pack is bringing infinite bombs to your favorite starfighter dogfights. Of course, it's bringing a lot of other things, as well. You'll find two non-unique pilots and two aces, including two different versions of Captain Nym—one Rebel and one Scum. You'll find ten upgrades. And you'll find that the Scurrg H-6 is, itself, a bomber with a uniquely flexible
maneuver dial
.

But before we get into all of that other stuff, let's start by looking more closely at the
Havoc
and its Bomblet Generator and what they might mean for your favorite Rebels, Imperials, and Scum.

The Havoc and the Bomblet Generator

Captain Nym's signature vessel, the Havoc was a modification of the prototype Scurrg H-6 bomber. The ship was designed by the Nubian Design Collective with combat versatility in mind. It was surprisingly fast and maneuverable, and it flew to battle armed with powerful shields and a bristling array of destructive weaponry.

The ship featured six forward-facing laser cannons, plus a rotating laser turret. But the most powerful weapon aboard the Havoc was its bomblet generator—a device that could draw upon the power of the ship's reactor core to fashion and deploy an unlimited number of energy bombs.

In X-Wing, the
Bomblet Generator
is a unique upgrade that costs three squad points and allows you to deploy a
bomblet token
once each round after you reveal your maneuver. Notably, this potent piece of tech isn't specific to any given faction, but it is limited to ships that can match the two bomb slots it occupies. These include the Scurrg (of course), the K-wing, and the TIE punisher. A Firespray-31 equipped with the
AndrastaTitle can also equip the Bomblet Generator, as can a Firespray-31 or a quadjumper crewed by the infamous bounty hunter
Cad Bane
.

Once aboard your ship, then, the Bomblet Generator functions in most ways like several other bomb-slot upgrades—
Seismic Charges
,
Ion Bombs
, and
Thermal Detonators
among them. When you reveal your maneuver, you can place a bomblet token at a speed "1" straight maneuver back from the Scurrg. At the end of the activation phase, the bomblet detonates, and anything within Range "1" of the token may suffer damage.

In other ways, though, the Bomblet Generator functions like a primary weapon. It doesn't get discarded. It offers a persistent threat. It heavily influences the way you fly your ship. And on ships like the TIE punisher and the quadjumper—as well as the Scurrg H-6—the Bomblet Generator may very well prove to be your attack of choice, so that you're positioning your ship in battle more to deploy your bomblets than you're trying to line up shots with your forward guns.

A
Karthakk Pirate
drops a bomblet before racing forward at speed "5," hoping to end up out of the TIE pilots' firing arcs.

This may be especially true for the quadjumper, since Cad Bane's presence would mean your bomblet attacks are likely going to be far more consistent than any attack dice you might throw into the mix.

Forced to Choose

There's another way that the Bomblet Generator functions much like a primary weapon—and that's in how your opponents respond to your ship.

In a game about fast-speed starfighter dogfights, bombs have been making an increasingly explosive impact. And while the Bomblet Generator may, at first glance, appear to steer things away from the classic dance of positioning and taking aim, the truth is that it is heavily limited—both by its uniqueness and by its double-slot requirement.

A 360-degree view of the Scurrg H-6 bomber.

It is the second of these facts that forces us to consider what we want from our bombs. Do we want big, high-impact explosions that are likely to cripple our enemies and leave them dead-to-rights for the rest of our squadron to finish them off? If so, the Bomblet Generator is three squad points and two bomb slots in the wrong direction.
Conner Nets
,
Ion Bombs
, and
Cluster Mines
offer far more synergy with a larger squadron.

However, with all things Wave XI, if you're looking to fly your Scurrg H-6 as a flanker, removed from the rest of your squadron, the Bomblet Generator makes for a wonderful and persistent nuisance. It may only deal a point or two of damage in any given round, but those points of damage can add up.

And because the Bomblet Generator activates when you reveal your maneuver dial, your opponent will be able to select his or her ships' maneuvers with full knowledge of where the bomblet token would be deployed, meaning its mere presence may redirect your enemy's squadron, just as would the threat of catching an enemy ship in arc and at Range "1" of your primary weapon.

Imperial aces like
Darth Vader
,
Soontir Fel
, and
The Inquisitor
may be more maneuverable than the Havoc, but they have to be wary of the constant threat its Bomblet Generator poses.

As a result, a Scurrg H-6 outfitted with a Bomblet Generator may be seen as a larger threat than its attack value of "3" might otherwise suggest, and your opponent may prioritize the ship's destruction from the beginning of the match.

But there's another reason why you might choose to load your Scurrg H-6 with bombs other than the Bomblet Generator. That's because the
Minefield Mapper
system upgrade allows you to discard any number of your equipped bomb upgrades after the "Place Forces" step of setup, and then you can place all the corresponding bomb tokens in the play area beyond Range "3" of enemy ships.

Choking off your opponent's planned approach with a Conner Net and a set of Cluster Mines may very well lead them to fly differently, and in many games, that ability to disrupt your opponent's opening strategy may very well outweigh the persistent threat of a Bomblet Generator.

Thanks to the Minefield Mapper, the range "2" band at the edge of the battlefield is no longer guaranteed to offer you an unobstructed flight path toward your opponent.

Captain Nym

In the end, all the questions about the relative values of the Havoc's Bomblet Generator and its other armaments only become material when you've got a pilot at the controls. Without a pilot, the ship is all potential. With the right pilot, though, the Scurrg is one-hundred percent action.

While there's much to be said for flying the bomber and dropping Conner Nets with a Karthakk Pirate at pilot skill "1," there's far more that we can share about the notorious pirate Captain Nym, a pilot famed for his heroism in the Clone Wars, his service to the Rebellion, and for leading the Lok Revenants, a band of pirates that was active in the Karthakk system.

First of all, the Captain Nym ship card appears twice in the Scurrg H-6 Bomber Expansion Pack—once as a Rebel pilot and once as Scum—and although both ship cards share Nym's pilot skill value of "8," they offer two wildly different, bomb-related abilities.

As a member of the Scum and Villainy faction,
Captain Nym
comes with the ability to ignore friendly bombs. He can fly right over your Conner Nets and Proximity Mines without detonating them, and he can even ignore the damage from your Seismic Charges.

This is a handy talent for your pilot to have if you want to litter the battlefield with bombs, but that's not even all that Captain Nym offers you. If you're really choking the battlefield with bombs and mines, such as you may lay with your Minefield Mapper, then Captain Nym adds a measure of defense to your whole squadron. "When a friendly ship is defending, if the attacker measures range through a friendly bomb token, the defender may add 1
result."

With this ability—which almost begs to be explored at the top levels of play—Captain Nym ensures that the Havoc isn't just going to make a splash in dedicated bomber lists; it's also going to help skillful players keep their ships unscathed through the initial combat passes at Range "2" and "3" before they devastate their opponents with powerful shots at Range "1."

As a Rebel,
Captain Nym's
ability lends additional value to bombs like Seismic Charges, Proton Bombs, and even your bomblet tokens. His text reads, "Once per round, you may prevent a friendly bomb from detonating."

There are two effects folded into this ability. First, you can prevent a bomb from discharging to no effect. If your Captain Nym or
Warden Squadron Pilot
should happen to drop a bomb while revealing his maneuver dial only for your opponent to avoid the blast radius, Nym's ability allows you to hold that bomb in place, transforming it into a threat for future rounds. Second, Nym can prevent your own ship from detonating one of your mines. While Scum Nym can fly over his Conner Nets with impunity, Rebel Nym allows any of your pilots to do so—although only once per round.

Importantly, there's no limit to the number of rounds Nym can target the same bomb. So if you're looking to choke the battlefield by deploying ordnance with your Minefield Mapper, Captain Nym can hold your Ion Bomb in place indefinitely, so long as he doesn't switch his target. And this means that Rebel Nym can take that Range "1" radius danger zone created by his Ion Bomb or
Proton Bombs
and apply it to the battlefield as early as setup with his Minefield Mapper—then just hold it in place for round after round until your opponent can no longer escape it and your trap, at last, comes together.

Built for War

With an armament boasting the Bomblet Generator alongside six laser cannons and a
Synced Turret
, plus pilots like Captain Nym and
Sol Sixxa
, the Havoc and the Scurrg H-6 Bomber are truly built for war.

How will you loose these forces upon your opponents? Share your thoughts with the other members of our community forums. Then head to your local retailer to pre-order your copy of the Scurrg H-6 Bomber Expansion Pack (SWX65) today!